Merry Christmas, One and All

For one of my figure drawing sessions at work this month, we had Santa model for us, and I decided that it would be great to bring out my gouache paint set and make a postcard out of it

Our Santa is a pretty cool guy, the kind you would drink a beer with, If you were a beer-drinking kinda guy.

This is the staff of Cordovan School of the Arts.

Shane Lewis

I've been copying Shane Lewis lately. His blog can be seen at http://stlewis.blogspot.com/
The frog on the top is my demo for a class in which I taught some five year-olds how to watercolor a Shane Lewis frog. I had a bit too much water when I was painting the eye, which resulted in a happy mistake that made lit look like a crying frog.

redesigning the Manos characters

Attempting to Impress Employers

Card Game Illustration

Lately I've gotten back into playing Cardmaster Conflict (cardmasterconflict.com for those of you interested in a new online hobby) and I suddenly realized after playing the game for five years that I could do some illustration for the site. I emailed one of the admins and they wasted no time in letting me help out with their new expansion set that's coming out.
The biggest challenge that I've found with illustrating for them is that the final images are all 123 by 50 pixels when they appear on screen during gameplay, which is an odd aspect ration to start off with, and then really low resolution, which means that I have to be extremely conscientious about my composition.

Stuff you haven't seen yet.

Oaktopus

A friend of mine requested an Oaktopus to put on his band's flyers. I decided to go with a Mignola-esque inked look for it, and then I decided I liked the image enough to color it, and then I decided to try out Corel Painter's watercolor functions, which I had never put enough effort into to get it to work well, but I have to say that I really like it now that I've given it a second chance.

The Master is Ready for his Closeup

Dailies (the plural form of Daily)

Remember how I posted the drawings of my first three days drawing MMA fighter Frank Shamrock? Neither do I. That's because I've realized how much I don't really enjoy scanning tons of images, but I just wanted to let all you true believers know that I've still been drawing the same picture every day for a month.
This month I've been doing a full body picture of a model dressed up as a spy. I've been using it as an excuse to emulate a bunch of different artists that specialize in drawing attractive females.
Original photo of the spy girl can be seen here.

The Master's Chamber

In my quest to come up with a plot for a video game adaptation of the worst movie of all time, I decided that it would be cool if the Master and his wives lived right on the mouth of hell, which happens to be a floating island. I've got 15 days until the huge portfolio review, and I'm hoping that some of this stuff I'm making will appeal to art directors enough to land some job offers.

Strong enough for a Manos but made for a Womanos

Here we are: Valley Lodge. It's just like in the movie, except with supernatural stuff going on. My idea was that the motel can travel through time and space in order to aid the Master in his quest to pick up chicks.

The Master Would Approve: Manos Character Sheets

I love terrible movies, and the most terrible movie of all is "Manos" The Hands of Fate. IMDB rated #1 worst movie of all time, I highly suggest looking it up on wikipedia for some guaranteed lulz. After watching the MST3k version of this movie one too many times, I started to think "if this movie had a plot, what would it be?" and then "how would I turn it into a freakishly sweet video game?"
I've got a gigantic portfolio review coming up on Thursday, Nov. 19, so I decided that in order to beef up my portfolio in the next month, I'll be doing all the concept art for this game during the next month. Also, my apologies to any fans of the film upset by the absence of Torgo. I promise that he's on the way later.

Yarr!!!

Caricature gig.

I've got myself a caricature gig coming up later tonight and I spent some time whipping up some examples that will hopefully convince people that they should spend ten bucks to have me draw them. I'm a wee bit nervous, but altogether, pretty darn hopeful.

Imaginism Fan Art Contest

If there's any artist in the world that I could be, it would definitely be Bobby Chiu, the awesome dude who did the line art for this piece.
Original can be seen at http://imaginism.deviantart.com/art/Making-Friends-134826135

Conference Weekend

This last weekend was General Conference, which means an excuse to draw one of my favorite subject matters: old people! I also used this as an opportunity to do some portraiture of my friend Casey, who's in the process of having me convince her to like me as much as I do.
I decided it would be a really bad thing if I came over to her house and drew her badly, so in the week prior to me drawing her, I did a few hours of practicing attractive female portraits, and I think the practice paid off.

Daily Frank Shamrock: Day 1, 2, and 3.

I decided this month, I would choose a subject that lends itself to awesome stylization so that I'll be able to focus on different interpretations of the subject along with how much better I can draw it on day 30 than on day 1. Consequently, I decided to take the photorealistic approach for days 1-3 as I went from line art to value to color.

busting out the big newsprint pads

I recently got a part-time gig teaching art at Cordovan School of the Arts. It's a lot of fun showing kids how to do stuff like paint a watercolor sunset with a rhino's silhouette in front of it and trying to explain things like why construction lines are necessary and why you shouldn't draw them sharpie-dark.
One of the perks is that I get to do some free figure drawing every week, and I finally decided to buy myself a big newsprint pad, some Conte crayons, and nupastel sticks. It feels good to be drawing like this again, and I think after going through a sketchbook per month for the last nine months, I'm excited to pump out some portfolio pieces.

Sometimes I just can't contain my excitement.

Daily Fuentes

I decided it would be cool to draw the same picture every day for a month, so I printed off a picture of Daisy Fuentes, my first celebrity crush as a teenager and I've been drawing that same picture every day for the past 30 days, and I have to say it's been a pretty cool experience that's really helped me out in the "drawing attractive females" department.
I've decided to do the same thing for the next month, except I'm going to the opposite end of the spectrum and drawing MMA fighter Frank Shamrock, who looks like he's taken many blows to the face during his cage fighting career.